Who benefits most when you are prescribed a drug? How many chronic conditions has conventional medicine cured?
Do you know what's in your medicine? Be proactive in your approach to your health.
We are not made up of pharmaceutical drugs - so they are not always the answer to long term health. Pills can help,but they shouldn't be the first and only option.
A healthy external environment and living in a non fear based world makes for better health.

Wednesday, 26 September 2012

Given the ever expanding grip that the Advertising Standards
Agency seems to exert over all of us therapists, do you ever ask the question
why? How?

It seems to me that many of the benefits that we were taught
as students when learning our therapies, and clearly apparent when practising
those such as reflexology, aromatherapy and massage have to be pushed under the
carpet and hidden. Not allowed to be
told! Why? Who is controlling this?

One of the remits of our professional bodies is surely to
uphold the values of our therapies and yet they seem to be floundering and
appeasing the cry for our therapies to be subject to the same rigours of
control that pharmaceutical drugs are. I
ask the same question - why? Why on
earth do we think that we have to try to emulate the clinical trials that have
been formulated to test drug efficacy?
They are completely the wrong model for most of our therapies so why are
we allowing ourselves to be sucked into that way of thinking?

I am totally fed up with being advised to dum down the
wonderful value that our therapies can offer to basically just a nice relaxing
treatment so the stress relief is the basis of the therapeutic effect - if it
has one, of course. Rubbish! Might as well go and have a lie-down or warm
bath and it will do you as much good.
Really? Would clients pay us and
return time after time for that?

Drugs are alien substances that are put into the body and of
course have to be properly trialled, though one does have to question the gold
standard of randomised, controlled studies, that was pioneered to stand up to
scrutiny in a court of law.

What happened to clinical observation, and even
patient/client evaluation?

The touch therapies can not be subject to placebo trials, as
any touch will cause an effect. A
"dummy" reflexology treatment given by a lay person will still have
an effect - most likely positive - as the touch will generate a response. It is quite ridiculous for us to be cowed
into thinking that we have to conform to the standards that are applied to
alien & very often highly toxic substances being administered to the
body. Aromatherapy is the nearest
equivalent to drugs that touch therapies use and trained aromatherapists know
how to use safely the essential oils that can have a much greater effect than
simply relaxation & stress relief!
Remember our training? Remember
the safety warnings? If they simply
generate relaxation and a feel good effect, why the safety warnings?

Steve Hickey discusses the subject of
evidence based medicine in his book "Tarnished Gold - The Sickness of
Evidence Based Medicine" and he will be speaking at the Convention on
Supportive Techniques for People with Cancer on 20th October 2012 near
Birmingham. He will be well worth
hearing - his views are spectacularly controversial and turns evidence based
medicine on its head. As therapists, we
need to hear this so that we can have an informed view on what is being forced
upon us. It shouldn't be and we need to
stop the insidious process from denigrating our therapies completely.

About Me

I have been a complementary therapist for well over 15 years or so and a lecturer for 12 but have always worked in the health field and natural health has been my passion all my adult life.
I got involved in the teaching of it and that has been a fantastic experience. Encouraging others in their pursuit of training in many different therapies at all levels.
Creating awareness of just what complementary medicine can do for the body and how it is as much a preventative as it a way of correcting the body.
I co-coordinate a support group for therapists in this area, known as Medella, having co run an FHT support group for 6 years previous. For me, complementary medicine really is my life.
Co founded CICHealth 4 years ago as an umbrella to run much larger health awareness events under. We have now closed that umbrella and that allows me to focus on the teaching. I'm a constant researcher on health, with a special interest in cancer. Every day there is something new to learn and sharing that information and ideas with others is a strong driving force in me. Helping to empower others in their learning or their health choices is a lifelong passion